“Nobody knows how they got up or when. A hunting party came along once
and saw that there was a town up there, and that was all.”
Otto rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. “Of course there must be
some way to get up there. Couldn't people get a rope over someway and
pull a ladder up?”
Tip's little eyes were shining with excitement. “I know a way. Me and
Uncle Bill talked it over. There's a kind of rocket that would take a
rope over--lifesavers use 'em--and then you could hoist a rope ladder
and peg it down at the bottom and make it tight with guy ropes on the
other side. I'm going to climb that there bluff, and I've got it all
planned out.”
Fritz asked what he expected to find when he got up there.
“Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or some of their
idols. There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow, I want to see.”
“Sure nobody else has been up there, Tip?” Arthur asked.
“Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters tried to
cut steps in the rock once, but they didn't get higher than a man can
reach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Bill thinks it's a boulder
the glaciers left. It's a queer place, anyhow. Nothing but cactus and
desert for hundreds of miles, and yet right under the Bluff there's good
water and plenty of grass. That's why the bison used to go down there.”
Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to see a dark,
slim bird floating southward far above us--a whooping crane, we knew by
her cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge of the island, hoping we
might see her alight, but she wavered southward along the rivercourse
until we lost her. The Hassler boys declared that by the look of the
heavens it must be after midnight, so we threw more wood on our fire,
put on our jackets, and curled down in the warm sand. Several of us
pretended to doze, but I fancy we were really thinking about Tip's Bluff
and the extinct people. Over in the wood the ring doves were calling
mournfully to one another, and once we heard a dog bark, far away.
“Somebody getting into old Tommy's melon patch,” Fritz murmured
sleepily, but nobody answered him. By and by Percy spoke out of the
shadows.
“Say, Tip, when you go down there will you take me with you?”
“Maybe.”
“Suppose one of us beats you down there, Tip?”
“Whoever gets to the Bluff first has got to promise to tell the rest of
us exactly what he finds,” remarked one of the Hassler boys, and to this
we all readily assented.
Somewhat reassured, I dropped off to sleep. I must have dreamed about a
race for the Bluff, for I awoke in a kind of fear that other people were
getting ahead of me and that I was losing my chance. I sat up in my
damp clothes and looked at the other boys, who lay tumbled in uneasy
attitudes about the dead fire. It was still dark, but the sky was blue
with the last wonderful azure of night. The stars glistened like crystal
globes, and trembled as if they shone through a depth of clear water.
Even as I watched, they began to pale and the sky brightened. Day came
suddenly, almost instantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue
night, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and all
manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows.
A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripened
corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves. We stripped and plunged
into the river just as the sun came up over the windy bluffs.
When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out to
our island and talked over the whole project of the Enchanted Bluff,
renewing our resolution to find it.
Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever climbed the
Enchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a stockbroker in Kansas City and will go
nowhere that his red touring car cannot carry him. Otto Hassler went
on the railroad and lost his foot braking; after which he and Fritz
succeeded their father as the town tailors.
Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his life--he died before he
was twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I was home on one of my
college vacations, he was sitting in a steamer chair under a cottonwood
tree in the little yard behind one of the two Sandtown saloons. He was
very untidy and his hand was not steady, but when he rose, unabashed,
to greet me, his eyes were as clear and warm as ever. When I had talked
with him for an hour and heard him laugh again, I wondered how it was
that when Nature had taken such pains with a man, from his hands to the
arch of his long foot, she had ever lost him in Sandtown. He joked about
Tip Smith's Bluff, and declared he was going down there just as soon
as the weather got cooler; he thought the Grand Canyon might be worth
while, too.
I was perfectly sure when I left him that he would never get beyond
the high plank fence and the comfortable shade of the cottonwood. And,
indeed, it was under that very tree that he died one summer morning.
Tip Smith still talks about going to New Mexico. He married
a slatternly, unthrifty country girl, has been much tied to a
perambulator, and has grown stooped and grey from irregular meals and
broken sleep. But the worst of his difficulties are now over, and he
has, as he says, come into easy water. When I was last in Sandtown I
walked home with him late one moonlight night, after he had balanced his
cash and shut up his store. We took the long way around and sat down on
the schoolhouse steps, and between us we quite revived the romance of
the lone red rock and the extinct people. Tip insists that he still
means to go down there, but he thinks now he will wait until his boy
Bert is old enough to go with him. Bert has been let into the story, and
thinks of nothing but the Enchanted Bluff.